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When I input my address in the 'Your Contact Information' section of the ESTA application form (for a visa waiver for entry into the United States), I repeatedly get a "Address Validation: Invalid Street Name". It doesn't matter what I put in the field, it doesn't accept it. My street number and name are not particularly odd-looking (no non-ASCII characters etc.).

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    We would really like to know the street name you put in, so we can give an answer that is a bit more than just "brute force"
    – Sebastian
    Sep 3, 2018 at 9:46
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    I don't think that it's a problem of invalid characters. It looks like they perform geolocation: that is, they look up your address on Google Maps or something like that to check if it's a real one. So I would guess that they could not place your home address on a map and hence it's possible that a human will have to give a second look at your application.
    – Federico Poloni
    Sep 3, 2018 at 10:25
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    @MartinBurch I’d doubt it: if OP is applying to get into the US, his contact information isn’t going to be in the US.
    – Robin Whittleton
    Sep 3, 2018 at 11:52
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    I didn't add the actual address I used, because I tried with a few different variations (even looking up how USPS would format it etc.), and even with an address from the next street over (just to see if it worked; I would've gone back and changed it if it had of course). But nothing worked. I suspect it's just that whatever address validator they're using doesn't have my suburb? Or maybe was just failing on everything at that moment in time (e.g. upstream service offline or something). Anyway, brute force works!
    – Sam Wilson
    Sep 4, 2018 at 0:20
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    Whoever coded that site ought to read falsehoods programmers believe about addresses A large portion of the world does not even have street names (including 1st world countries, like Japan)
    – Mawg says reinstate Monica
    Sep 4, 2018 at 14:36

1 Answer 1

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Just keep clicking retry, and eventually, after a dozen tries, it will give you the option of accepting the address anyway and continuing:

Verification checkbox

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    @ROIMaison He didn't come back. He already knew the answer and posted it at exactly the same time as the question. It was never unanswered.
    – pipe
    Sep 3, 2018 at 14:58
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    @pipe, he still took the time to come back to Travel.SE from the ESTA application form to inform the rest of the world about this issue and how to resolve it by posting it as a Q&A.
    – RyanfaeScotland
    Sep 3, 2018 at 16:02
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    It's true, I posted the answer at the same time as the question. It was just because I'd spent 20 minutes worrying that I wouldn't be able to submit the ESTA application, and wanted to post the info somewhere useful! :-)
    – Sam Wilson
    Sep 4, 2018 at 0:17
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    I don't think they'd have an override checkbox if it wasn't anticipated. But it's a good point. Still, this seems to have gotten lots of upvotes so maybe people think it's useful!
    – Sam Wilson
    Sep 4, 2018 at 3:02
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    @user13267 That seems unlikely. It is a common and inevitable problem with sites that rely on address verification that eventually a user will come along with a valid entry that is not "on the list" (e.g. a new street). The option to manually override it was clearly deliberately designed in this case.
    – JBentley
    Sep 4, 2018 at 16:09

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